Generally, the holidays are a time for extended shopping hours, vacations, and family. In the small business and startup world “days off” are few and far between, and many business owners hardly take time to eat, let alone take days off. With the holidays quickly approaching, it’s important to find time away from the business to spend time with family, recharge the batteries, and get a fresh perspective heading into the new year.

I asked eight entrepreneurs how they manage to find a balance between taking time off for the holidays and making sure their business are running at all cylinders:

Plan Ahead

Schedule time off in advance. It’s so important to schedule it in your calendar before anything else, otherwise, the time gets filled up and all you do is end up working anyways.

Work on side projects

Delegate and Follow Up

Delegate but require daily updates so that you can keep in the loop of what’s happening while
you’re unavailable. After the holiday you should try to figure how to
keep this going permanently to free you up to focus on other critical areas
of the business.

Shut off the Smart Phone

There are no excuses for over-working this holiday season with these great tips. How do you manage your time and holidays as entrepreneurs and business owners? Let us know in the comments section below. Happy Holidays!

Ryan O’Connellis the Vice President of Business Development for Digital Talent Agents, a company that helps experts build their businesses through thought-leadership and content marketing by producing high-quality content for reputable publications. You can reach out to Ryan on Twitter @Oconnellryan.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

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Jeremy Kraayenbrink

Hi, I´m a business owner in Argentina. I´m 25 years old and have had my own company for 2 years now. There are no excuses to prevent yourself from enjoying some time off. My recommendations: define what´s to be done in the near future and set a plan to effectively get it done without you being phisically there (do it yourself before, ask someone to do it for you, let your customers know you´ll be away, etc); work on other areas you could do remotely and don´t take too much know-how energy, just fun stuff and brainstorming on the beach; if you HAVE to work, just do what´s necessary, don´t spend time on the computer waiting for things to happen while staring the monitor, set timetables for mail check and replies, and phone calls, let them gather up and reply once a day (delegating what can be delegated and congratulating your employees on new sales!); give your subordinates the chance to earn your trust, they won´t let you down.

Jeremy – Sounds like you and Diane are on the same page as far as planning ahead goes; I completely agree with you both. I find my best time to plan ahead is when I’m more relaxed – like on Sunday.

You have some great recommendations and I appreciate you adding to the conversation.

Jeremy Kraayenbrink

Thanks Zach! – Night before and early morning are great moments to plan as there are less – or no- interruptions such as phone calls, peer talk, urgent stuff, etc. Save time when possible to be able to enjoy that extra time with stuff that really matters such as enjoying your earned vacations! You´ll be back to work full of energy and ambition!